In 1882, Dr. O. C. Irvin became the first superintendent of the El Paso city school district. One of his dreams was to have a good high school in El Paso. He served as president of the school board beginning in 1913. Dr. E. H. Irvin made El Paso High School a reality to help El Paso's overwhelming growth problems. Mr. C. M. Irvin was a member of the El Paso Chamber of Commerce and was the president of the school board from 1955 through April 8, 1958, when he retired. Mr. Cecil S. Bean was Irvin's first principal, and Mr. Boyd was the first assistant principal.
Academics
Irvin serves the central portion of Northeast El Paso, an inner-suburb area of mainly single-family homes and apartment complexes built for the most part in the 1950s and 1960s, except for the Eisenhower-Sahara neighborhood between Dyer and McCombs Streets just south of Woodrow Bean Transmountain Road and the Castner Heights neighborhood, which was built on a tract of former US Army land bordered by Dyer Street, the Patriot Freeway, Diana Drive and Hondo Pass Avenue. These contain many newer homes built beginning in the late 1970s, and the Eisenhower-Sahara neighborhood contains a public housing development of duplexes and a fairly large mobile home subdivision for singles and retirees, Robin Hood Park. Irvin High School was designated a T-STEM academy in 2012 after the Governor’s Executive Order RP53 in 2005. The first T-STEM academies opened in the 2006-2007 school year and have since then made great strides in college readiness and competitiveness of Texas high school graduates. "Rocket New Tech" is the name of the platform Irvin High School will use to launch their cohorts of students beginning in their freshman year into Irvin's T-STEM courses. From Irvin's Official website, it states,"Irvin T-STEM pathways include Engineering, Biotechnology, Media Productions, Cyber Security and Computer Technology."
Attendance zone
Is defined by Railroad Drive on the southeast; McCombs Street on the east; the Patriot Freeway, Hondo Pass Avenue, and Mercury Street on the west; on the south, Apollo Avenue and Diana Drive east of the Patriot Freeway and Atlas Avenue west of it; and on the north, Woodrow Bean Transmountain Road east to Girl Scout Way, then Girl Scout Way north to Fairbanks Drive, then Fairbanks east to Alcan Street, then Alcan south to Woodrow Bean, then Woodrow Bean again east to McCombs. Magoffin Middle School and portions of the Canyon Hills Middle School and Terrace Hills Middle School attendance zones graduate into Irvin; the elementary schools in the Irvin feeder pattern include Crosby, Dowell, Lee, Moye, Schuster, Stanton, and Whitaker, as well as the southern edge of the Newman Elementary attendance zone.
School mascot and colors
The Rocket was chosen as the school's mascot because of Irvin High's close affiliation with the military. On that same line, the patriotic colors of red, white and sky-blue were chosen by the coaches and the school board to represent Irvin pride. A popular legend is that Irvin High School was made in the shape of a rocket. From an aerial view, the layout of the school does resemble one. However, this has never been officially confirmed.
